Leah Mordecai eBook

Here the beautiful girl ceased her story. Both
friends for a time were silent. In Lizzie’s
soft blue eyes the tears glistened, and she looked
with surprise into the cold, hard face of Leah, which
had lost its gentle expression, and seemed petrified
by this recital of her woes. Then she said:

“Would I could help you, Leah, by sharing your
sorrow.”

“No mortal being can help me, Lizzie. I
am ill-starred and ill-fated, I fear.”

Filled with sympathy, and with a heavy heart, Lizzie
bent her head, and laid it in Leah’s lap; and
her silent prayer, though unheard by mortal ear, ascended
to the throne of the Eternal Father, and was answered
in the far-off future.

“It’s late, and we must go,” said
Leah; “already the street lamps are being lighted,
and I shall have to render some good excuse for being
out so late.”

“So we must; it is growing late,” Lizzie
replied.

“Remember now, I trust you, Lizzie,” said
Leah.

“Never fear; I shall never betray your confidence.”

Then the two girls left the window, walked hastily
through the hall and corridor, down the spiral staircase,
out into the street, and turned homeward.

CHAPTER VII.

The two friends walked side by side in silence the
distance of a square, and then their paths divided.

As Lizzie Heartwell turned the corner that separated
her from her companion, she drew her shawl more closely
around her benumbed form and quickened the steps that
were hurrying her onward to her uncle’s home.
Her mind was filled with sad and gloomy thoughts—­thoughts
of the life and character of her beloved friend.
The misty twilight seemed deepened by the tears that
bedimmed her vision, as she thought again and again
of the life blighted by sorrow, and the character
warped by treachery and deceit.

“Alas!” thought she, “had the forming
hand of love but moulded that young life, how perfect
would have been its symmetry! What a fountain
of joy might now be welling in that heart’s desert
waste, where scarcely a rill of affection is flowing.”

Filled with these and like thoughts, Lizzie reached
the doorway of her uncle’s house, and was soon
admitted beneath its hospitable roof.

Leah Mordecai, when separated from Lizzie, plodded
straight forward toward her father’s elegant
home. The street lamps shone brightly, but the
departing daylight, that was spreading its gloom over
the world, was not half so dark and desolate as her
poor heart. Yet Leah seldom wept—­her
tears did not start, like watchful sentinels, at every
approach of pain or joy. Only when the shrivelled
fountain of her heart was deeply stirred, did this
fair creature weep. Calm, placid, and beautiful
in the lamp-light, the features of her young face
betrayed no emotion, as she passed one and another,
on beyond the din of the garrulous multitude.